The Coffin Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  It had begun as a routine midnight report that the cargo had been loaded from the Iranian oil terminal that day. The oil was currently—on paper at least—the property of the Abu Oil Company, but it was likely to pass from owner to owner during the voyage according to the vicissitudes of the oil market. Their papers to transport the cargo from the Gulf to the huge refineries in Europoort near Rotterdam in Holland, sailing via the Cape of Good Hope on the standard route were all in order. The report had contained all this information but then it had somehow turned itself into a diatribe against the men the owner had sent aboard—the men Levkas refused to take into his confidence.

  Hamstrung by the fact that he could not be absolutely sure who else was listening to the open radio link, and by the knowledge that he could never be explicit if there were the faintest chance he might be overheard, unaware of just how drunk he really was, Levkas was trying to explain that Martyr simply did not fit in with his crew, who otherwise seemed perfect for the business in hand: “…hand picked. All of them. Men I know. Men I can trust. I don’t have to like them. I do not like any of them particularly, except the boy Kanwar and Nicoli, but I know them. I know what they have done and will do. I know nothing of these men Martyr and Gallaher except that I do not trust them.”

  “Captain…” The owner’s voice was irritated. The man had a Greek name, thought Levkas. Why did he never speak in Greek? Had he no pride? “Captain Levkas, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  “I understand your concern, Captain. You must understand me. I vouch for these men. I guarantee they will fulfill everything required of them. In any case, you know there is no time to get replacements out to you. You sail in the morning.”

  “I understand that. I understand how tight the schedule is. But you could get new men to Dubai in three days. I have names, numbers. There is the launch which comes out from Ras al Kaima…”

  “I don’t see how that would solve anything, Captain…”

  “You do not understand the nature of the problem. My crew is a well-tuned instrument, involved in a dangerous undertaking. Each one knows his place. They do not trust this American, or…” An idea struck Levkas. He threw open the door of the Radio Room. Outside, the radio officer, Tsirtos, was talking to the Hong Kong Chinese chief steward “Twelve Toes” Ho. “You two!” bellowed the captain. “Get the mate down here. He’ll be on the bridge…”

  But Tsirtos returned a minute or two later to report that Nicoli was not, in fact, on the bridge. Nor was he in his cabin. There had been no officer on watch since Kanwar had disappeared over an hour ago. This was too much for Levkas. With a bellow of rage, he broke off connection with the owner and stormed out of the Radio Room. “Sound for lifeboat drill!” he ordered. “I want everyone up and out!”

  Ten minutes later, with the alarm still sounding, everyone was at his assigned post for lifeboat drill. Everyone except Nicoli, Gallaher, Kanwar, and two seamen.

  “We’ll search the ship!” announced Levkas, unconsciously slurring his words.

  It took them half an hour to reach the Pump Room. Captain Levkas himself swung the great bulkhead door open with a sort of explosion of rage and there were the missing men, grouped around a ladder at the far side of the room. The scene was so natural it didn’t occur to him that anything might be wrong. He looked up, saw Nicoli standing twenty feet up and, calling his name, stepped in.

  With a ragged cheer, the others began to follow him in. After the long search, it was the natural thing to do.

  Two steps over the threshold, Levkas knew there was something badly wrong. One more, hesitant, step and he knew just what it was. He turned, solid enough to stem the rush, but not to stop it. Tall enough to see over their heads to Martyr’s face outside the door. A terrible roaring began, filling all the room. The first drunken officer tottered away, collapsing, surprised.

  “Out!” yelled Levkas, but he knew it was already too late. The face outside the door asked an agonized question, although its lips did not move.

  Strange, thought Levkas dreamily; now he was putting all his trust in one of the two men he had said he could not trust at all.

  There were simply too many people coming in, away from the door. All his officers now except the chief engineer and the boy Tsirtos. There was no time to repeat the order; to explain to them that they should all turn and get out. The carbon dioxide, heavier than air, would spew out of the door until at first the corridor, and then the Engine Room and everywhere else level with or below here was also deadly. The only real chance they had for rescue came from the deck hatch ninety feet above. And then only if the men immediately outside the door survived.

  There were half a dozen of them in here and half a dozen oxygen masks in the Fire Control Room. Christ! if only his head was clearer! Another man sat down, faintly surprised at being unable to catch his breath. Only a millisecond had passed since his eyes had met Martyr’s. There was no choice. What ever the chances of the people inside, the door had to be closed. Almost wearily, Levkas nodded. The massive American’s face twisted with the effort. The great slab of steel swung closed and the flat clang of its closing echoed in the bright room like the chime of a cracked bell. The captain was sealed inside the deadly Pump Room with ten other officers and crew—five dead and five dying fast.

  Levkas was already moving, shouldering his way through those few still standing, looking away from their desperate eyes. Useless to all until he got to an oxygen mask and was able to breathe himself. It was years since he had bothered to train for anything like this. He had all but forgotten the rules. Of course he was holding his breath now but had he already breathed in a lungful of the deadly gas, like the others, dying with every new breath they took? Should he hurry and risk passing out from overuse of the little oxygen left in his system; or should he walk more slowly and risk simply running out of time? In the end he walked as fast as he could toward the Fire Control Room. Blackness swirled around the periphery of his vision. Lightning flashed before his eyes. The door, coming closer, suddenly became much taller and he never realized he had fallen to his knees.

  All he could feel was the pain in his chest. It was like fire but he would not breathe. He fell forward and gashed his head on the jamb of the door. The blood came out blue. The shock of the fall surged through his system, giving him an iota more strength. As though in a dream, he pulled himself to all fours and crawled. Weaving from side to side, a terrible parody of the numberless drunken staggers of the last few years, he crossed the room until his head hit the wall opposite. By a supreme effort of will he found the strength to reach the masks a mere three feet above him, and he pulled one off the wall. Dizzy with relief, he placed the face mask over his nose and mouth and switched the equipment on.

  And nothing happened. It was empty.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Martyr was a fit man, lean and hard; and yet he was completely out of breath by the time he reached the Pump Room hatchway on the deck. He stood, back straight, head up, gazing at the pearl-bright stars and filling his lungs with oil-tainted air, the backpack caught up from the Emergency Room on his way here held erect before him on the deck. The pause gave him time to think—not about the danger he was going into, but about the man he was going to save.

  He had nothing but contempt for the other officers aboard. Oh, Nicoli looked a little better than the rest on the surface; Kanwar and Tsirtos, perhaps, just young and in the wrong company, but there was not one of them who could have called on an instant’s loyalty from him until to night. That one professional gesture. That one silent command from Captain Levkas. That one act worthy of a captain, unexpectedly putting the safety of ship and majority of crew before his own life. That deserved a little of Martyr’s hard-won respect.

  And, as senior officer left alive, even in this situation—even on this ship—he had a duty.

  He checked the pressure reading on the backpack’s oxygen canister, slipped it over his shoulders, and pressed the mask over his mouth. Then, su
ddenly full of energy, he knelt and tore the hatch clasps loose.

  When he looked down the ladder, at first he felt a swirl of vertigo. The steel uprights looked thread-thin as they plunged ninety feet straight down. The rungs blurred into one another, making the ladder look like a slide. But there was no time for hesitation now. Perhaps he had taken too long already.

  He swung one leg over the raised rim of the hatch and placed his foot carefully on the first rung. Then deliberately, hand over hand, he began to climb down. He breathed slowly and evenly, watching the rungs go by. Watching the backs of his hands. Watching the display on his digital watch. It was 00.50 Gulf time when he started climbing down and he never remembered seeing the display change from that reading; but when he checked again, consciously if automatically as he stepped off the last rung, it read 01.00 exactly.

  He hesitated an instant before turning. He had seen enough of death already, and had hoped to see no more. It was not fear; more a weariness. He was exhausted deep inside, as even the strongest will become after a while when tested near to destruction. As especially the strongest will become when they will not—cannot—share their burdens. But now he was here. He had no choice. He drew strength from that and turned.

  Most of them were piled by the door, sitting or lying at ungainly angles; eyes and mouths wide, as though incredibly shocked at what had happened. A glance at them was enough to satisfy him that they were all beyond help. Another glance at Nicoli and his men clustered round their short ladder scant yards away. At Gallaher propped against the Fire Control Room, apparently peacefully asleep. Nine bodies. No captain.

  Without further hesitation, he crossed to the Fire Control Room: his first priority still Levkas.

  The captain was lying at the foot of the far wall, curled on his side, clutching an oxygen cylinder. The mask was loosely over his nose and mouth. Martyr crossed to his side at once, pushing the mask more firmly into place. He checked the cylinder pressure. It was empty. He replaced the whole thing. Only when the mask was firmly in place and pumping oxygen did he check for vital signs.

  He could find none.

  He straightened quickly, searching for the manual override to the firefighting equipment. It was on the wall nearby. He switched it off and the fans on. They would clear the inert gas in time, but in hours, not minutes. Only then would the atmosphere in here be safe. Only then could the bodies be moved. Until then, there was nothing to be done.

  He looked down at the captain curled uselessly around the life-giving bottle like a dead child in the womb. He thought he might as well finish the job he had come down here to do. He took the hunched shoulders and tore them off the floor with a massive effort. He propped the inert body against the wall and stooped, letting it fall over his shoulder. Then he straightened, lifting the dangling feet into the air.

  For some reason he glanced up as he passed through the Fire Control Room door, saw the blackened, shorted-out wires above the lintel, and began to understand.

  He was breathing like a bellows when he reached the foot of the ladder up to the escape hatch. He glanced up at the distant hatchway and the one bright star that seemed to fill it. Should he go across and open the door? He could hammer on it to warn anyone who might be still outside. For all he knew the corridor was still full of the carbon dioxide that had leaked out before he had closed off the Pump Room. And, ultimately, that was the trouble. There were decks and working areas below this. The engineering decks—his own domain. The thought of filling them with deadly pockets of heavier-than-air inert gas was something he could not accept. He turned again and started to climb. With each rung, the captain’s inert body became heavier. With each added strain on his own body, Martyr’s consciousness closed down, keeping pain and fatigue at a necessary distance until he had completed his task.

  How long it took him to complete the ninety-foot climb was something else he would never be sure of. He didn’t even notice when the ladder ended. He fell out of the open hatchway with his grim bundle onto the cool iron deck, to lie there like another dead man until Salah Malik, leader of the seamen, had the pair of them carried away.

  But there was too much to do. He struggled back to wakefulness before they even reached the bridge, then stood watching as they lugged the captain’s body on into the brightness.

  “Our first job is to contact the owner,” he said to Malik, who loomed competently at his side. “Then we’d better start clearing the Pump Room. I’ll write the Accident Report and make up the logs, since there doesn’t seem to have been a watch officer on the bridge for nearly two hours. Nor in the Engine Room since the lifeboat drill.

  “I’ll have to guess what happened to Nicoli and his team, I guess. Any idea what they were doing down there with that ladder?”

  Ghostly in the shadows, Malik’s shoulders shrugged.

  “Well…Let’s get to it then. Two of your seamen gone I know. The rest just officers, I think. And Gallaher. Tsirtos in the Radio Room?”

  “I suppose.”

  He was. Sitting wide-eyed with shock, staring at the bright displays. “They’re all dead, aren’t they, Mr. Martyr? Everyone who went into the Pump Room,” he said as the chief put his head through the door. “Thank God you stopped me from following them! I walked round the ship after you closed the door. The stewards were all in their berths. The seamen are around somewhere. I’ve seen Malik. But the ship’s just empty. Corridors. Cabins. Everywhere. Empty. Like the Marie Celeste. Ghost ship…”

  Martyr let him talk. There was time. Little enough, God knew, but time to let a shocked boy talk away his fear.

  Gently he said, “Can you reach the owner?”

  “Will we go down in history, like the Marie Celeste?”

  “Maybe get a spot on the six o’clock news. Those reporters sure seem to love a good outbreak of death. Can you contact the owner?”

  “And when I was wandering around the corridors, I could hear some kind of pipe playing. Ghostly. Like ghosts singing.”

  Into the eerie silence, Martyr agreed, “Sure. One of the stewards plays a flute. His name’s Nihil. He’s the only one not from Hong Kong I think. It’s real pretty.”

  “I never dreamed there would be anything like this, Chief. This is really my first berth. Nicoli got it for me. We’re from the same village. Were from the same village…”

  “That’s tough. Can you get the owner for me now, Sparks?”

  “What? Oh, certainly. He’s still at his hotel, I expect. The captain was just talking to him.”

  “Well, get him!”

  It took a few moments, during which Tsirtos calmed a little, soothing his way past an angry night porter, getting the phone rung in the owner’s suite in spite of the unusual hour.

  As soon as the ringing tone filled the small room, Martyr said, “That’s enough for now. I’ll take it from here.” And he gently ushered Tsirtos out.

  Just at the moment the door closed behind the departing radio officer, connection was made.

  “Yeah?” snarled the owner.

  “Demetrios? It’s Martyr. We got trouble.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Four thousand miles away, two hours later, Richard Mariner sprang awake in an icy sweat. He lay for a moment in the tangled wreck of his bed as the sound of metal grinding on metal died in his ears. He always heard the terrible sound of the impact, never the explosion. But then, the impact had, oddly, been the more terrifying of the two, and the explosion itself had seemed silent to him. The explosion that had destroyed his last command, his last crew. His wife. His life.

  Mariner swung himself out of bed and strode through into the sitting room. Long windows facing the river made the place seem like a ship’s bridge and he stood where the helm would have been, looking over the Thames toward Nine Elms with the bright span of the Vauxhall Bridge on his left, unconsciously reliving those last terrible seconds on that other, real bridge.

  He was tall, thin of waist and hip; but the breadth of shoulder and depth of chest gave him the appear
ance of rocklike solidity. The strength of his jaw might have suggested an equally resolute character to an old-fashioned expert in physiognomy, who might also have seen natural aristocracy in the aquiline jut of his nose, broken a little out of line now; and fastidiousness—perhaps tenderness—in the delicate line of his lips. In the half light, his face seemed almost blue: hair so black as to have a hint of it; square jaw, even when shaven, with a tint of it; and eyes like magnesium flares behind a pane of sapphire.

  And rings, bruise deep, below them.

  On the sill before him lay his current reading, Nigel Balchin’s The Small Back Room. Richard remembered Sammy Rice’s first words in it: “In 1928 my foot was hurting all the time, so they took it off…” God! If only memories could be like that.

  Every once in a while Richard Mariner’s memory would start to play up. It would never be for any particular reason, never on the anniversary of his first meeting with Rowena Heritage, of his marriage to her, or of her death. Out of the blue he would suddenly find himself prey to nightmares. In his dreams great ships would blow apart. Then sleep itself would become a dream. He would become moody, violent. Unable to concentrate. Unable to work. Surrounded by ghosts wherever he was.